"Oh, yes. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago I went to see her aunt. She told me that Maisie had been married for the last two years to a traveling salesman she'd been in love with for a long time, and that she had a baby."
The thought of Maisie brought back the thought of Honey; and the thought of Honey woke him to the fact that he had been on this spot before.
"Why—why, Hildred! This is the very bench on which Miss Nash and the other nurse were sitting—"
"When you were stolen?"
"When somebody was stolen." He looked round him. "And there's Miss Nash over there!"
On the bench near the lilacs Miss Nash was seated with a book.
"We ought to go and speak to her," Hildred suggested.
Miss Nash received them with her beatific look. "I saw you leave the house. I thought you'd come here. I followed you. I had something to do, something I swore to God I'd do the day my little boy came back. I'd—" She held up a novel of which the open pages were already yellowing—"I'd finish this. Juliet Allingham's Sin is the name of it. I was just at the scene where the lover drowns when my little boy was taken. I've never opened the book since; but I've kept it by me." She rose, weeping. "Now I can finish it—but I'll go home."
Sitting down on the seat she had left free for them, they began to talk of the scene of the afternoon, which as yet they had avoided.
"I hope I didn't hurt their feelings."